Queen
by SaturnOolaa
Summary: A princess, and how she grew.


Disc: Don't own em.  
AN: ...It really isn't my fault this has such a terrible name. Nor is it my fault I've written two fics about this character in a row. The following is only a theory- it may be right, it may be wrong, but think about it. Doesn't it just make so much sense to you? In closing, I love the Southern Defense Force. The whole thing. Even that amusing cook from Suikogaiden 2.  
  
QUEEN  
  
Her boots tap steadily on the stone floor as she swaggers across the room. Even inside the buildings here the air is hot and dry. There's a steady hum of voices, and faint music from buskers outside. Harmonia really is a strange place. There are so many different people, so many cities and regions overtaken by the empire. Around her people speak in foreign accents. She'll get used to it.  
  
Her sword bumps steadily against her thigh as she walks. She'll get used to that, too. She's been picking fights on her way here- enough to analyse what works and doesn't work out of her formal training. She won less than half of them. That's fine. She can adjust slowly.  
  
She left home. It was really all she could do.  
  
It was the day of her twentieth birthday that she realised she had to go. She'd looked up from her pheasant- amazing, how easy it was for a foreigner to get rare birds- up to the ornamental sword over the fireplace, and something had awakened inside her.  
  
How easy it would be to just grab the sword and hold it to her breast, savour the tang of metal and thick crimson blood and slaughter everyone like the animals they were pigs really become the devil incarnate laugh at the pile of corpses and laugh at the whole world what has it ever done for you remember who you are you are a Blight and you belong to me  
  
She'd thrown up all over the tablecloth and retired, sleepless, to bed.  
  
The thought was fascinating. The Beast Rune had always belonged to the family, but she had never considered the fact that the family might belong to *it*.  
  
And it was a kind of cold comfort to discover that Luca's behaviour might not have been his own fault after all. When he went insane, maybe something else took root there. Don't mad wolves attack livestock?  
  
She reached a decision that night. For the sake of the maids and the cook and the guards in the mansion- but most of all for Pilika, who was slowly growing older and becoming a sweet, intelligent teenager with a passion for the theatre. The only way she had of fighting the rune was to stop being a Blight.  
  
Hanging out in bars and watching the women there talk to each other, she decided to become one of them. It was partly the desire she had always had to be more than a pretty face- but it was party because she admired those women, tough and beautiful, callused hands holding mugs of ale as they laughed and exchanged stories of battles they had won and bounties they had captured. Those women who were boozers and trash-talkers and whatever else they wanted to be.  
  
She gave handfuls of money to anyone who would teach her to fight, and soon had a steady stream of swordsmen at her door. Some were nobles, with proper, elegant styles of swordplay. Some kicked enemies in the groin and hacked their heads off like so much meat. Anything they taught her she drank up like water, until the day she beat one.  
  
She chopped her hair off and strung beads into it. She learnt to drink like a fish, swear like a sailor, and fight like a tiger. She learnt that a well-placed kick was useful on men who thought to sleep with her. She learnt a number of bawdy tavern songs that, much to Pilika's delight and the butler's dismay, she would sing around the house every day. She learnt how to imbed runes in her hands and ignore the strange shock whenever she used them. She learnt to cook cheap, and three ways to avoid tripping over her own combat boots.  
  
She gave up eating meat. It was difficult at first, watching everyone else gnaw drumsticks as she slowly chewed her salad, but it got easier as time went by. She didn't want to take any chances.   
  
Then she strapped her sword to her hips, slung on pants and a men's shirt, and went out into the world beyond her town for the first time since leaving Highland. Pilika didn't cry. She only made her promise to visit sometimes.  
  
And now she's here. No one would ever believe that the self assured, smirking woman walking through the room was once a princess. She probably wouldn't believe it herself. Closing her eyes and sighing contentedly, she makes it to the counter after what seems like a lifetime.  
  
The man looks up at her impartially. "Can I help you?"  
  
"I'm looking for work," she says, grinning and gesturing to her sword. "The name's Queen."  
  
END 


End file.
